It often happens that a client comes in looking for a redesign, and they don’t really know why they want it. One of the reasons is that it looks old and, that’s decent enough motivation. But, it can’t be the only thing driving the decision. It quite regularly is though.

With new sites, there’s often a service which needs to be marketed, and a website is required as part of the arsenal. Unfortunately, no thought has gone in to what the site needs to do for the business, beyond looking good.

I generally start to probe around, making suggestions on marketing goals, usability, calls-to-action, etc. and the penny does usually drop on the client’s end, but, that’s my doing and really should be the client’s.

Brian Cray wrote a wonderful article on his blog last month that I just stumbled across. The title is self-explanatory and it’s something I’ve been wanting to write about it. However, he’s done a fantastic job covering the subject, so I’ll just link to him instead.

Guidelines for Highly Effective Websites
Be strategic when you decide to launch (or redesign) a Website. Don’t just throw something together or you’ll end up with what you started—nothing. Always start with a purpose—the most compelling reason for your Website to exist. It must be compelling or you’ll die a silent and painful death on the Internet.

I wonder if I’m the only seeing this. I was using Google Chrome v2 earlier today to browse the Mozilla Add-ons site and noticed that it wasn’t rendering correctly.

I checked the same site in Firefox v3 (and IE 7) and it seemed to looked okay, which got me wondering about why Chrome’s not displaying it correctly.

See for yourself:

Fantastic set of labels to help stop bad design. Print on sticker paper and use liberally.

http://www.design-police.org/
 

Wired has a cool piece on ambigrams and typography called,  “Two Ways: Calligraphy With a Twist.“

Kinda makes you want to load up Freehand (yes, I still use it) and start fiddling around with font paths!

Extract:

The phrase to the left can be read two ways: right side up and upside down. It’s called an ambigram, and it’s the hottest trend in typography since Helvetica.

Have a look at the ten other fantastic examples. Good stuff!

Our new site — barely average design — is now live: http://www.barelyaverage.com